Clara lay beside Elias in the ditch, her face pressed against the icy dirt, her breath ragged. But she did not scream. She didn't weep. Her fingers were clawed into the oilcloth satchel, holding it against her ribs with desperate strength.
“Who are they?” she gasped, spitting dirt from her mouth.
“Crowe’s regulators,” Elias hissed. He peeked over the rim of the ditch, brought the Winchester to his shoulder, and fired three rapid shots toward the ridge.
The rifle cracked sharp and authoritative. One of the riders’ horses reared violently, neighing in terror as Elias’s bullet clipped the horn of the saddle. The three men scattered into the timber, seeking cover behind the granite boulders.
“Can you run the horses?” Elias asked, not looking at her, his eyes locked on the tree line.
“I can drive,” she said, her voice shaking slightly but holding firm.
“When I fire again, crawl down the ditch fifty yards to the culvert. That’ll put you behind the wagon. Get on the bench, keep the team at a gallop, and don't stop until you hit the main street of Dry Hollow. Head straight for the sheriff’s office.”
Clara stared at him, her dark eyes flashing with sudden, intense anger. “And what about you?”
“I’ll hold them on the ridge. If they flank the wagon, we both die in this ditch.”
“No,” she said fiercely, grabbing the sleeve of his sheepskin coat. “We don't separate. You said we were partners, Mr. Ward. A partnership doesn't start with me running while you get shot in a frozen ditch.”
Elias turned his head, looking into her face. Her cheek was scraped from the gravel, her bonnet was knocked sideways, but there was an unyielding fire in her amber eyes that stopped him cold.
“They have the high ground, Clara,” he said, his voice dropping into an urgent whisper.
“Then we change the ground,” she retorted, pointing down the ditch bed toward the river bend. “The old cattle chute is three hundred yards west. The willow cover runs all the way to the rocks. If we move the team through the trees, they can’t see us from the ridge.”
Elias glanced toward the willows. She was right. The thick brush along the creek provided a continuous corridor of cover that the riders on the high bluff couldn't penetrate with their rifles.
“All right,” Elias breathed, a grim, reckless adrenaline surging through his blood. “On three. Move low, and don't let go of that satchel.”
He rose to one knee, fired two rounds into the pines to keep the snipers' heads down, and grabbed Clara’s hand.
Together, they scrambled down the frozen ditch, plunging into the dense willow thicket as a third rifle shot tore through the branches above their heads, the battle for Black Creek exploding into open war under the freezing Wyoming sky.
The willow thicket was an iron cage of frozen twigs and thorns that tore at Clara’s woolen coat and scratched Elias’s neck as they forced their way through. Overhead, the dry branches rattled like dry bones in the dead air. Behind them, from the timbered crest of the ridge, came the shouts of the riders, muffled by distance and brush, followed by the metallic clatter of lever-action rifles being reloaded.
“Keep your head below the bank!” Elias whispered harshly, his boots sinking through the crust of hard snow into the spongy silt of the dry irrigation bed.
Clara did not answer. She had no breath to spare. Her left arm was clutched tightly across her midsection, crushing the oilcloth satchel with the ledger books against her ribs as though it were an infant. Her skirts caught on the brambles; she ripped them free without pausing, her boots slipping on the frozen river stones. She was breathing through her teeth, her mouth tasting of alkaline dust and copper.
Fifty yards ahead, the team of horses—Banner and the bay mare—stood hitched to the buckboard behind an outcropping of gray sandstone. The animals were trembling, their ears flattened against their skulls, sensing the gunfire and the panic in the air.
“Get in the wagon!” Elias hissed, shoving her up by the elbow toward the wooden step.
“Untie the team!” Clara countered, landing hard against the horsehair bench. She dropped the satchel between her boots and seized the leather reins, which were frosted stiff and slick. “If you stay to shoot, they’ll cut us off at the culvert!”
Elias didn't waste a heartbeat arguing. He vaulted onto the hub of the left wheel, severed the hemp hitching rope with a single sweep of his pocketknife, and swung his long frame over the buckboard rail into the seat beside her. He reached out to take the lines, but Clara’s knuckles were already white against the leather.
“Drive, then!” he roared. “Keep their heads toward the creek bed! The sand is frozen—don't let the wheels cut into the gravel or we’ll throw an axle!”
Clara brought the whip down across the team’s rumps. The crack echoed off the rock face like a pistol shot.